Twin Roses
by EstellaB
Summary: Paul Irving finds his twin rose. Disclaimer: I don't own the characters. Oneshot.


**A/N: It's beyond me to ferret out the age gap between Little Elizabeth and Paul Irving. But they were _clearly _made for each other. (Thus speaks the romantic heart of a sixteen year old). So I took poetic license and made Paul one year older than Elizabeth. If anybody has any real objections, feel free to flame me. But please read it anyway. I also have not been able to discover Paul's wife or Elizabeth's husband. To me, they belong together and anything else would be almost sacrilege. I love Paul and I wanted to write him a little romance.**

"Do you think that, when dryads die, they become part of the sunset, Paul?" Little Elizabeth asked wistfully. "I think that water-nymphs would become the white horses in waterfalls... or the dew on a rose... or frost on the first autumn morning... but the only dead part of trees is the twigs and leaves, and I cannot bear to think that a poor dryad would be trodden on just for having 'lived its life out', as Susan would say." Little Elizabeth, as Anne persisted in calling her, was eighteen years old, and she had been pleading for a visit at Ingleside. Both she and Paul were firmly possessed of the delusion that their visiting at Ingleside at the same time was purely a coincidence. Anne, who had never quite lost her love of matchmaking, did not think so-however, she was not inclined to disillusion them just yet.

For Little Elizabeth, it was pure bliss to sit here and talk nonsense with Paul. He was most _definitely _of the race that knows Joseph, a "kindred spirit", as Anne said. She couldn't talk dryads and nymphs and sunsets with anyone else. The Glen gossips though she was a terrible heathen, but Paul knew that she was just imagining.

"Paul?" she prompted him. Paul was gazing absently out at the sky, at the clouds clustered around, softened by the sunset. Susan had said once, thinking she was deeply poetic and had been spending too much time with "Mrs Dr., dear," that that sort of cloud looked like the souls of roses. "What do you think?"

Paul turned his eyes from the golden sky to the slim, golden-haired faery sitting next to him. "I think," he replied honestly, "that no dryad, nor nymph, can be anything as beautiful as some humans." Elizabeth's cheeks turned a trifle pink at that point, and she glanced away. "But," he continued, worrying that he had been too forward, "I do think that dryads are the very resin of trees. You know, faery, that when you cut a tree, its resin seeps out, all golden-brown, and protects? That is the dryad, protecting her tree." Elizabeth was poetry in herself. Sometimes he was scared to even speak around her, for fear he might frighten her away, for fear he might wake and find that she was only ink and paper, words and half-rhymes.

"If a primrose could talk," Elizabeth replied, "I think it would speak with a lisp-a _lithp_."

"If I could see your soul," Paul smiled, "I think it would look like an iris."

"If I could hear yours, it would sound like a nightingale welcoming the magic of the stars."

It was Paul's turn to blush slightly, and he turned the conversation to other matters. However, Susan, pegging out the washing, had unintentionally overheard it, and she remarked that night to Anne that the two young fry could talk some nonsense when they were left alone. Anne simply laughed, and replied that what seemed like one man's rubbish is another man's gold.

"To be sure, Mrs Dr., dear, but whatever you might think to the contrary, one cannot see souls, and Miss Elizabeth does not look like an iris." Anne smiled softly at this. She did not reply to Susan directly, but dreamily murmured something about twin roses, which Susan promptly dismissed. She was used to this household's fixture on poetry by now, and she had even grown to tolerate it. However, she would never make it herself, "and that you may tie to".

* * *

"I wish... I wish..." Little Elizabeth sang to herself as she busied herself in her room on the last day that she and Paul would spend together.

"What do you wish, faery?" that very lad asked, poking his head into her room. "I know what I wish. I wish that, since it is my last day here, that you would come with me down to the spring in Endymion-" (this is what they had christened what would one day be Rainbow Valley) "-and share a picnic with me. Make my last day a happy one, so that when I look back and remember it I see the spirit of dreams and joy, not the ghosts of chances not taken."

"Of course," she replied gladly, but to herself she thought, _chances not taken? _Surely he meant only that he didn't want to waste the day. That day, she would always remember that it was uncannily warm for March; it felt like all the springs of the world had come at once, just for them. She went out barefoot and bareheaded, despite Susan's protests that she would catch her death. The day was far too alive for such unromantic things as hats and shoes. In fact, when she was out of Susan's sight, she threw off her shawl as well.

"I agree with you," Paul said quietly. "Today it _is_ impossible to wear such things-but don't get ill, please, faery."

"Why do you call me faery, Paul?" She wasn't being coquettish, merely curious.

"You look like something that I dreamt once."

She turned scarlet at that and looked at the ground. Paul would not be lying, and she had the feeling that he was not a poet, either, just then. Much to her relief, the spring came in sight just then. Endymion was sparkling in the morning dew.

"Oh, it's a beautiful world," she half-spoke, half-sang.

"Made all the more beautiful by your presence in it." He stooped and plucked an early spray of fuchsia from the bush that overhung the stream. Tucking it into her loose hair, he added, "All this beauty fades into insignificance next to you, dearest of dreams." She shook her head, but he caught her hand and gently but firmly turned her face up to look into his. At that minute, he nearly lost his nerve. They had both known that this moment was coming for several weeks, but Paul devoutly wished that Elizabeth could instigate it instead of him. He had planned it all out-written a whole speech-but it had flown clean out his head. He began to change his mind.

Finally, Elizabeth knew what she was going to say. She had dreamt of this moment, day-dreamt and night-dreamt, for the past few weeks, almost constantly, and every time she had given a different answer. A thousand different answers... say yes, say no, tell him to wait, tell his you only want to be friends, have hysterics, solve the difficulty by being suddenly taken ill and not having to decided, tell him to let her sleep on it... But she looked him straight in the eyes for the first time that day, and knew beyond any doubt what she would say. That look made Paul's mind up for him as well.

"I love you, Elizabeth," he told her softly. He didn't give her any option, but he bent down and kissed her. It was the first time he had called her by her name since they had met.

"I know you do," she replied when he moved away. He chewed his lip nervously.

"And?" he prompted her.

"You know _Isabella_, by Keats?" she asked, apparently changing the subject. He nodded mutely. "There's a few lines in there that I positively love...

_'Parting they seemed to tread upon the air_

_Twin roses by the Zephyr blown apart,_

_Only to meet again more close and share_

_The inward fragrance of the other's heart.'_

I always equate it with you." She smiled at him. _"You _are my twin rose. I didn't know so, wasn't sure, not until a few moments ago, but... It's true, it's so true." She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him back, amidst the fuchsia, with the sound of the spring tumbling down next to her.

* * *

Paul and Elizabeth walked into the house for supper that night in a dream. Mrs Blythe took one look at them and was satisfied that her matchmaking had worked at last. She glanced at her husband, darling memories of their own rising to the forefront of her mind. The expression on Gilbert's face was sufficient to assure her that he felt the same. Susan, upon seeing the young couple, was momentarily regretful that she had never fallen in love herself, and never would-but only momentarily. He next instant she was swept up in congratulations.

Paul Irving and Little Elizabeth were wedded a year to that day in what was to become Rainbow Valley. It was the first of many weddings there-little did Jem Blythe, for example, who stuck his tongue out and wrinkled his nose when Paul kissed the bride, dream that one day he would kiss his own sweetheart there. As the new husband and wife danced amidst the fuchsia, and a songbird sang in the willows, Susan Baker clucked her tongue.

"Well, Mrs Dr, dear," she exclaimed, baby Shirley on her hip, "they almost have me believing in poetry, and that you may tie to."

**Another a/n! I don't like this now-it seems too contrived. But I'm so in love with the pairing that I had to post it. Flames are welcome! **


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